reverse engineering – recent advances and applications - OpenLibra

GUIsurfer: A Reverse Engineering Framework for User Interface Software
GUIsurfer: A Reverse Engineering Framework for User Interface Software 15
Fig. 7. Agenda’s betweenness values (highest betweenness values represented with thicker
edges)
Considering Figure 5 where edges represent decision logic in the Agenda GUI layer, the GUI’s
overall cyclomatic complexity is 18 and each Agenda’s window has a cyclomatic complexity
less or equal than 10. In applications there are many good reasons to limit cyclomatic
complexity. Complex structures are more prone to error, are harder to analyse, to test, and to
maintain. The same reasons could be applied to user interfaces. McCabe proposed a limit of
10 for functions’s code, but limits as high as 15 have been used successfully as well (Thomas,
1976). McCabe suggest limits greater than 10 for projects that have operational advantages
over typical projects, for example formal design. User interfaces can apply the same limits of
complexity, i.e. each window behaviour complexity could be limited to a particular cyclomatic
complexity. Defining appropriate values is an interesting topic for further research, but one
that is out of the scope of the present Chapter.
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